Washington/Moscow: On a day when Moscow followed Washington and withdrew from the Treaty of Open Skies (TOS), the US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke today with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to stress the importance of continuing a diplomatic path to de-escalate tensions surrounding the “deeply troubling” Russian military build-up in and near Ukraine.
Blinken reiterated the unshakable U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and underscored that any discussion of European security must include NATO Allies and European partners, including Ukraine.
The talk assumes significance because of the growing distrust among the two military superpowers, that today culminated into Russia’s withdrawal from the TOS. The US had already withdrawn from the TOS. Russia’s withdrawal today makes it obvious that the effectiveness of the Treaty will decrease dramatically without the United States and Russia as member states: the area of its application will diminish by approximately 80 percent, and the number of Open Skies missions planned for 2022 will plunge.
Only yesterday Lavrov had mocked the US during a joint press conference with Croatian foreign minister Gordon Grlic-Radman in Moscow. Responding to the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s statement that the United States has 18 various scenarios for Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov had quipped: “I can only supplement his comment with some assumptions. The US has about 17 secret and intelligence services plus one at the State Department. So, 18 scenarios in all. Maybe they announce internal tenders.”
Lavrov accused the US of spreading “complete disinformation” to the effect that Russia is allegedly preparing a provocation to attack the Russian-speaking population in Donbass [a historical, cultural, and economic region of Ukraine] with a view to receiving a pretext for this “invasion.”
He claimed that the “current tragedy” of Ukraine broke out in 2014 but not because of some provocation by Russia but due to the state coup that was supported and largely engineered by the US. “It is abundantly clear that Ukraine is now under US governance. Washington could certainly compel the Kiev regime to abide by the Minsk Agreements,” he said.
Today, their distrust level rose a level further, when Russia singularly held the USA “fully” responsible for the deterioration of the Open Skies regime as the country that started the destruction of the Treaty.
Moscow said as of December 18, 2021, it is no longer a party to the Treaty on Open Skies (Treaty) and has consequently ceased to be a member of the group of States Parties stipulated in its provisions.
“The decision to join the Treaty was not an easy one for us. However, we adopted it in the interests of stronger international security. A major argument in favour of that decision was the participation of the United States, which called for military transparency but was reluctant to open its territory to confidence-building measures,” Russia stated.
Moscow claimed that it did its “best to implement and preserve the Treaty not on paper but in real life, sometimes taking big steps towards the other states parties”. However, accusing the USA, it regretted that all its efforts to preserve the Treaty in its initial format failed.
“The Treaty fell victim to the infighting of various influence groups in the United States, where hawks gained the upper hand. Washington set the line towards destroying all the arms control agreements it had signed,” Russia claimed.
It added: “Even when the balance of interests, rights and obligations of the member states was disrupted by the United States’ withdrawal from the Treaty, Russia did everything in its power to find a compromise solution. We proposed several options to settle two fundamental problems, namely, the non-transfer of information collected during observation flights to states that are not party to the Treaty and guarantees of our right to conduct observation flights over US military facilities in Europe. However, some countries value bloc discipline more than the interests of peace and international security. Their support for the Open Skies Treaty has been limited to empty declarations that have no practical use.This has left us no choice. Russia’s withdrawal from the Treaty was predetermined. We cannot and will not neglect the interests of our national security.”
– global bihari bureau
